3
Daniel met her stare, and answered it with one of his own. Damn she was direct. Everyone was sitting there, arms folded, waiting. He knew they would be judged by what he said, and how he said it. Daniel looked around the camp, and back at the woman.
“We must have looked like wild men coming into your camp. We were dirty, hungry, and thirsty. Yet you took us in and fed us, took us where we could rest and clean ourselves up. I see no reason to lie to you people. I’m sure that this is the place described in our dreams.” He looked around at the people and saw some heads nodding in agreement. He took a deep breath and began.
“Well, I can tell you how it started. I know it’s the truth because we were there; we saw it all first hand. Some archeologists showed up at Camp Bradley, in northern Nevada with permits allowing them to start a dig on base. They found a large underground cavern. Last word received from the group was that they were going in to explore it. Shortly after that all contact was lost with the base. When we went to have a look-see, the dragons had emerged from the cavern. We tried to get a handle on the situation, but there was nothing in our arsenal that would stop these beasts. They took out jets like they were bothersome flies, pests to be dealt with as soon as they showed up. Washington sent me to Thunder Mountain to try to find a way to destroy them. The scientists were stumped; we never really found a weakness we could use against them. After Washington was taken out, they buttoned up the Mountain and prepared for a long siege. That’s where we came from, the Denver area, Thunder Mountain, where what’s left of the government resides.”
Daniel stood up and introduced the guys. “My name is Daniel, Major Daniel Sherman/US Army Special Ops. Over there is Sgt. Jerry Lakers - my point man and engineer. And this here is Sgt Steve Bowman, demolition expert.” Both men stood and sort of waved to the assembled group. Steve leaned over the table and saluted both dogs; and the crowd laughed and cheered him on. Daniel continued on ignoring Steve’s antics, “There was another, but he was killed several nights ago,” he said softly, as if in reverence.
“Inside the Mountain you’d swear that nothing has changed, the government still goes on, with all the niceties; but the minute you go outside you know it has changed. They want things to go on ‘as usual’, but they fail to see that that time is gone; it is never going to come back. We could see they were all living a lie. That was when the dreams started for us. I don’t know how to explain about them telling us to leave the Mountain. We compared notes later and realized we were all having the same sort of dreams; they were urging us to ‘get out fast.’ We knew that sooner or later it was going to fall apart. The four of us decided we couldn’t stay locked up in there – we had to leave. So we came up with a plan they would go for; we convinced them that a little reconnaissance would be a good thing. We left and never looked back.”
“We’ve been on the road for the last year and a half. Believe me, it’s been an education. We’ve gone all the way back to the east coast, and there is nothing left there, nothing. We went to Washington, and that place is a real mess. We decided to head west and started across the country. We came across some areas that were totally destroyed…nothing left but ash. People were trying to exist at the Stone Age level. And then, not 20 miles away, we would come to some towns that hadn’t been touched at all. The townsfolk in these places wanted nothing to do with us. They would give us shelter for a night, and they were nice and all; but they would ask us to leave in the morning… real polite-like, holding shotguns.”
Daniel took a breath and looked at the faces of the crowd. He could see he was getting thru to some.
“In some areas we had to fight our way thru marauders, and then run like hell to get away from them. There are several bands of them all across the country. If they ever get a strong leader and unite, we could all be in some serious danger. On one occasion they were lying in wait for us, would have killed us for sure, but a huge black dragon was flying overhead and attacked them before they could spring their trap. We were real lucky that time.”
Daniel stopped for a moment and took a long drink of his ice tea.
“After awhile it was like you said, something seemed to be pulling us in this direction. We had the same dreams, but somehow they were patterned for each one of us. And we couldn’t quite remember all of them…. just that they had something to do with the mountains. So we kept going west. We crossed thru many towns and cities that had been abandoned; same thing with ranches as we went further west. We crossed a desert and then we came to the foothills. There were signs of some kind of terrible battle down there, lots of bones and ash. As we began to climb the mountain I began to feel that we weren’t alone; you know the feeling.” Several heads nodded in agreement.
We needed to get into some cover, so we headed up into what we thought was the thickest part of the hills. We heard some really weird sounds down there. There was something lurking about down there that wasn’t right. After a bit, we all agreed that we felt like we were being stalked. We moved along real quiet like and tried not to leave any kind of a trail. But two nights later ‘they’ found us. There were two of them, and there was a terrible fight. I’d rather not remember that fight; we lost one of our own, a good man. One of those ‘things’ destroyed our food and water supplies. I’m not ashamed to say that we ran like hell. After three days with no food or water and barely any sleep we saw the mist and headed for it like a steamroller. It was like stepping into one of our dreams; that was when we sort of stumbled into your lower camp. I know we must have looked a sight, but believe me, we are not your enemies; we mean you no harm.”
Everyone looked at the woman, waiting. She seemed to be listening to someone, but he couldn’t see an earpiece on her. Her brow furrowed and then she sort of nodded and turned to us, “Jake says you’re telling the truth; you can stay if you want.”
A shout went up by some of the people in the cave, “Yea! All right, about time!”
There was a big sigh of relief on Daniel’s part. Sam came forward and shook their hands. Daniel tried to see through the throng of well-wishers to the woman. He caught a glimpse of her smiling at the open display of acceptance from the community.
Sam stood up, “all right everyone, give them a break. You all know the routine; rules first,” Sam was speaking as the authority this time, “listen up, come on settle down!”
He waited till there was silence.
“Okay, there are two rules you need to follow here in the camp. Number one, everyone here works for the benefit of the Community; safety of the Community comes first. Number two; we look out for each other, treat each other as our brothers and sisters, and help out where and whenever it’s needed. That covers everything.” He looked at Daniel and Steve and smiled.
“Most of the time we’re safe from ‘THEM’,” he said raising his head, “but occasionally one will get curious and fly over. When that happens Jake gives us enough of a warning to get to shelter. Then he takes care of the problem, same thing when one of the beasts makes it up here.”
Daniel let out a short whistle, “I’d like to meet this Jake. Taking out a dragon like it was just a bit of a inconvenience, this guy must be something else.” He could hear low snickers and laughter in the background. (Who is this Jake; and this woman who haunts my dreams?)
The woman cut in, “that will come later Daniel. Sam sort of runs the camp down here; he’ll find you and your men a place to bunk down, for the time being. And he’ll show you all the routine. We’ll soon see if you’ll mean to stay and be a part of us…or if you’ll can’t take the hard work and move on.” With that she turned around and left the group with the dogs galloping behind her.
“What did I say…or do?” Daniel scratched his head turning toward the others.
Sam stepped forward and took Daniels arm, “that is Jake’s Lady, Daniel. Don’t take it to heart man, it’s not personal. She’s got to be real careful in these times. She doesn’t trust anyone at first; you’ve got to prove yourself. And time takes care of that; I reckon she’ll be watching you men for a long time. Being military and all, she’s going to need extra convincing – even if Jake says you’re all OK.”
Daniel whipped around quickly, “just who the hell is this mysterious Jake? What’s so special about him? How come he’s not here to judge us face to face, how come...”
“Easy, easy… hold on man! This is the rules, we all made them and even Jake abides by some of them. We’ve managed to keep out the fire-dragons and the riff-raff all these years. We’re not changing things now. The safety of the Community is most important; it always comes first. We’ll see how you men measure up in six months. By then just maybe you’ll have a different attitude about things, we’ll see. Now let’s gather up your gear and we’ll move you and your men to a more permanent cave.”
The cavern they were in was on the side of a granite rock mountain. It was bored out and the huge cavern was the area they used for cooking meals, meetings, and the like, Sam explained. Everyone took meals here. And after the meal was done the business of the camp was discussed each night, any new ideas were explored. If anyone had a grudge it was aired and action was taken. Everything was shut down at dusk - no lights, or fires. People went to their prospective ‘homes’. Complete blackout procedure was followed. A huge boulder was then pushed in front of the ‘Hall’ and a large flap of thick black canvass was dropped from the inside. Coleman lanterns were then lit and these people knew that they were going to be in there for the night. Most of the time they were just the 3 cooks in the large cave; they preferred the safety of the Hall to the unsure aspects of being outside. Sam took Daniel and his men thru the entire camp. Actually, now that he could see more of it, it was almost a town. There was a street, of a sort, trails leading off in all directions. There were what appeared to be some trailers actually cut into the side of the mountain.
Daniel was wondering; how did they do that? How the hell did they get trailers up here? There were also a lot of caves on the other side that were cut right into the mountainside - homes? People were settling in for the night.
“We put the new people up here in the temporary caves. If you decide to stay you can carve out your own place.” Sam could see Daniel looking up the side of the mountain. There were a series of steps of a sort cut into the side of the mountain leading up into the mist. It seemed to cover the whole mountaintop.
“What’s up there”? Daniel asked.
“Just some more caves. Michael lives up there with Lady Jennie, his companion, as does Jake and his Lady. Michael was the man who showed you to the showers; the ‘twins’ are his.”
Daniel stopped, “Wait a minute that would make him her grandson. No way! She said he was a kid when they came here. That would make him… what, 14 now. That was a man of at least 23 or 24. Are you kidding me?”
“No, not at all Daniel,,, he went off one day and when he returned that’s what he looked like. She and Jake weren’t bothered by it at all, said they expected it sooner or later.”
Sam watched Daniel’s expression as he continued on.
“But then she did the same thing some years back. She was a 74 year old lady when all this began, and within three years of our settling here she changed into what you see now.”
Daniel’s eyes grew as Sam continued on, “oh, we’re living in strange times I tell you; nothing would surprise me anymore, not with the dreams and all.”